Firefly Aerospace has made history by becoming the first private company to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon. The Blue Ghost lander touched down safely at 2:34 a.m. Central Standard Time on March 2, after a soft landing that left it in an upright configuration. The craft landed within 100 meters of its target, using “vision-based terrain relative navigation” systems to find a flat and safe spot.
The mission is designed to last 14 days and will deploy NASA payloads for various experiments, including subsurface drilling, sample collection, X-ray imaging, and dust mitigation experiments. After the sun sets, Blue Ghost’s mission will likely end due to Lunar nights being very cold. However, the lander carries a payload that will continue to be useful even if it doesn’t wake up.
The Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector device on board the lander will reflect light and be used by scientists to measure transit time as they bounce back to Earth. This technology is expected to greatly improve upon Apollo-era results with sub-millimeter range measurements, providing advances in the lunar coordinate system and contributing to our understanding of lunar physics, astrophysics, and cosmology.
Firefly’s achievement marks a significant milestone in humanity’s exploration of outer space, paving the way for future private missions to the Moon.
Source: https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/03/blue_ghost_private_moon_success